Damage Control Time as Obama's Bombed Speech Inflames Mideast

RUSH: Wouldn't you love to be a fly on the wall in the Oval Office today when Netanyahu shows up there? A fly with a great comprehension of Hebrew cuss words. Man, oh, man, Obama's gonna go over to the CIA today. He's going over to the CIA to thank the interrogators that he's prosecuting for helping him find Bin Laden. Maybe he could take Netanyahu with him as a human shield when he goes over there. You know, there's been a lot of commentary on the speech. I gotta tell you, have you noticed how almost every mainstream media report is trying to do damage control on this speech? There are some exceptions but most people, most of the lamestreamers are doing their best to do damage control here, which shows you what a bomb the thing really was. And what they're trying to do is pretend that Obama's demand that Israel return to its pre-1967 borders, that's a phony controversy, that isn't any big deal, that's long been US policy, they say. They're trying to claim that it does not represent a real shift in policy.

They're claiming the US government's always wanted Israel to go back to the 1967 borders, but how can that be if George W. Bush wrote Israel a letter -- I have that letter, excerpt of it -- in 2004, which was endorsed by both houses of Congress, by the way, which promised Israel the United States would never or would not demand such a thing. Now, here's the pertinent text from the President Bush 2004 letter to then-Prime Minister Ariel Sharon. Quote: "As part of a final peace settlement, Israel must have secure and recognized borders, which should emerge from negotiations between the parties in accordance with UNSC resolutions 242, 338, United Nations Security Council. In light of new realities on the ground, including already existing major Israeli population centers, it is unrealistic to expect that the outcome of final status negotiations will be a full and complete return to the armistice lines of 1949," aka the pre-1967 borders, "and all previous efforts to negotiate a two-state solution have reached the same conclusion. It is realistic to expect that any final status agreement will only be achieved on the basis of mutually agreed changes that reflect these realities."

So the media is out there trying to say that the 1967 borders, that's long been US policy. Obama didn't upset any apple carts. And it has not been US policy, as recently as 2004. And I'll tell you, folks, apart from his betrayal of Israel, the thing that struck me most about Obama's speech yesterday, when I finally had a chance after the program to digest this and take it in, he was talking as if the United States was still the biggest mover and shaker in the world, when he doesn't want it to be. He's running around trying to make sure that that's not the case, at least verbally. But there he was giving away billions of dollars to Egypt and Tunisia, anybody else he happens to favor at the moment. He told Bashar Assad he has to accept democracy or give up power. He told Israel how big their country should be.

But let's get real. The United States is no longer the world's power broker. We are broke, but we're not the power broker. We're broker than broke. He's running around giving away money that we don't have. If anything, China and India ought to be calling these shots, and after all, isn't that the way Obama used to say he wanted it? He's running around apologizing for this country. He's told people that the days of the United States leading the world economically are over, those days aren't going to happen. And is there any doubt, folks, that when it comes to the Palestinians and the Israelis, he's got an affection for the Palestinians? There's no question about this. None whatsoever. Longtime opposition with our allied status with Israel.

There's a couple pieces here. This is from Israel National News: "Israel Expects Obama to Take Back '1967 Lines' Demand -- Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu was quick on the draw Thursday in voicing clear displeasure with President Barack Obama’s mideast policy speech. 'Israel appreciates President Obama’s commitment to peace,' the response began, curtly. 'Israel believes that for peace to endure between Israelis and Palestinians, the viability of a Palestinian state cannot come at the expense of the viability of the one and only Jewish state.'" And you'll note as we pointed out yesterday, nobody talks about the right of return and when that's not discussed all the rest of this is disingenuous. It's a fundamental, seminal demand that the Palestinians have. The Israelis are never gonna grant it and the Palestinians are never going to give it up. The right of return, if it were ever granted, if it ever happened, it would be the end of Israel. The fact that that's not being discussed here is quite important in determining exactly what this really is all about.

In another story out of Israel: "Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s associates expressed their disappointment with Barack Obama’s speech Thursday, with one aide saying that the US president is detached from regional realities. The PM’s associates told Ynet early Friday that Netanyahu, who departed to the US Thursday night, is prepared for a confrontation with President Obama on vital issues." Now, it's quite understandable the Israelis would not be pleased and wouldn't be happy here. The New York Times today, Helene Cooper: "Obama and Netanyahu are facing a turning point. As Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of Israel heads to the White House on Friday for the seventh meeting since President Obama took office, the two men are facing a turning point in a relationship that has never been warm. By all accounts, they do not trust each other. President Obama has told aides and allies that he does not believe that Mr. Netanyahu will ever be willing to make the kind of big concessions that will lead to a peace deal."

Whereas, of course, ladies and gentlemen, the Palestinians have made one concession after another, right? The Palestinians continue to make concession after concession after concession after concession. Sarcasm there, for those of you who don't understand. But once again here, the New York Times is framing it all about Obama. The New York Times once again, as is happening throughout the mainstream media, making this all about Obama, when, because of Obama, life-and-death issues for Israel as a nation are now on the table, and they have been for a while. But the New York Times tries to portray this as a personal dispute between the status quo conservative Republican-loving Netanyahu and Obama, who is a great intellect. And if you read the story, you would note how the Times says Obama was humiliated when Netanyahu refused his order to stop construction on the West Bank some months ago.

So naturally, according to the New York Times, Netanyahu has to be punished. And that's what yesterday was also about. Obama's using the upcoming vote in the United Nations about establishing a Palestinian state to try to wring the '67 borders concession from Israel. So once again you've got a dichotomy or a dilemma, if you will. Many in the mainstream media are trying to cover up for this bomb of a speech, and in the process the New York Times is taking it a step further, making it personal between Obama and Netanyahu, and on that score of course Obama kicks butt. That Netanyahu, he likes the Republicans, he likes conservatives. (interruption) No, Snerdley, right of return would just turn Israel into Palestinian. We're talking nearly five million people who claim they were displaced from their homesteads. The right of return, they want to go back to what is now Israel before it was chartered. It would be the end of Israel.

As I tried to eloquently point out yesterday, you haven't heard that being discussed in any of this, and it's the fundamental issue. I continue to sit here and on the one hand I slap myself on the head, okay, I gotta talk about this. I mean it's in the news. My perspective is sorely needed, no question about it. But it's still a trap. There's nothing new here, other than for the first time we have a president who is clearly aligned with the enemy of our ally, not with our ally. That's what's striking, that's what's new here. But in terms of anything being done now that's going to lead to so-called peace, there's nothing out there that's gonna lead to peace. This does not work. This is not how it happens. Peace, doctors, nurses, clean water, do not happen at the end of a bunch of sentences. You don't negotiate peace. You negotiate terms of surrender. And nobody's talking about that.

In the meantime, we continue to spend money we don't have, throwing it around in all these places. And you've got an area of the world, the Middle East, which is undergoing an uprising. We've been lied to about what that's all about, this Arab Spring. One story that I do believe has some truth in it, the Wall Street Journal a couple days ago: " Jewish donors and fund-raisers are warning the Obama re-election campaign that the president is at risk of losing financial support because of concerns about his handling of Israel. ... Some Jewish donors say Mr. Obama has pushed Israeli leaders too hard to halt construction of housing settlements in disputed territory." You know, my question about this, what took you so long? This is one of these questions that I have forever had. I've been befuddled by blind Jewish support for liberals and Obama my entire life. I've gone to the greatest Jewish thinkers of my generation to have this question explained to me.

I've gone to Norman Podhoretz, who's written an entire book about this, and at the end of the day, at the end of all of it, nobody really has any different or better answer than they've ever had. That it's just blind emotional loyalty based upon totally erroneous assumptions that Jewish people make about conservatives. I mean here's a guy that sat in Jeremiah Wright's church for 20 years? He ought not get a Jewish dime. But as you know, he gets the vast majority of campaign donations from Jewish organizations and individuals.

BREAK TRANSCRIPT

RUSH: Here's Ben Stein from the Sunday show on CBS, CBS Sunday morning. I read from this yesterday, but this is Ben Stein actually in his own voice defining for the CBS Sunday morning audience which you could probably put in a thimble what the Arab Spring is.

STEIN: The Arab Spring, as a force for democracy, human rights and peace in Egypt seems to me to be a fraud. The dictator and his entourage who were kicked out in Egypt were pro-West, a bit restrained on Israel, open to free enterprise, and resistant to Iranian-sponsored terror. Egypt is now rapidly becoming anti-Israel, pro-Iran, pro the Iranian-sponsored terrorist group Hamas, and very far from being pro-human rights. As the terrorist government of Syria cracks down violently on its own people, the UN Security Council does exactly nothing about it. Has anyone noticed that the common denominator of all the successful Arab street movements is that they are sympathetic to Iran? When the dust settles, Iran is going to own the Middle East - except for maybe Saudi Arabia, if we have the guts to help them, which I very much doubt. You can call it Arab Spring if you want. But with Iran now the regional superpower, it is a lot more like an extremely bleak Mideast winter.

RUSH: And this happens to be a point of view gaining favor, gaining acolytes, that the Arab Spring is not how it's being portrayed, an uprising of democracy. Clearly it's what the regime wants us to believe, and of course Obama's responsible for it, Obama made it happen, Obama's election, Obama's existence, Obama's presidency. Why, even Obama killing Osama is bringing about the Arab Spring. Of course no mention of George W. Bush and Iraq having anything to do with an uprising of democracy, but in fact an uprising of democracy is not what is happening. Here's a media montage, Today Show today, chief foreign affairs correspondent Richard Engel reporting about Obama's speech in the Middle East.

ENGEL: In the Middle East the reaction to the speech has been by and large negative. ... In Cairo the reaction was mostly disappointment. Many Egyptians wanted a US peace initiative for Israeli-Palestinian talk. ... But democratic change in Egypt has created a new reality here, and unleashed voices the United States may not like. Hours before President Obama spoke, Islamic fundamentalists gathered in Cairo to demand the release of Omar Abdul Rahman, the blind Egyptian cleric imprisoned in the United States for masterminding the 1993 attack on the World Trade Center. ... One of the cleric's sons, Mohammed, told me his father should be released on humanitarian grounds. ... Mohammed fought alongside Osama Bin Laden in Afghanistan. I was surprised to see him out protesting at all. ... This would have been unthinkable under the previous Egyptian government, which often arrested hard line Islamic militants. It certainly wouldn't have allowed them to demonstrate in front of the American embassy in Cairo.

RUSH: Middle East reaction to Obama's speech is negative. Washington Post: "Obama Speech Greeted with Wariness and Apathy." And the primary reason for it is that they're saying it's just words. He coulda said this a long time ago. Well, we're looking at what he does and doesn't do rather than what he says. "But for many in the region, it was simply too little, too late. 'I don’t think this is going to fix his image. He should have said something from the very beginning, but we’ve been waiting,' said Fares Braizat of the Arab Center for Research and Policy Studies in Qatar. 'Most people have realized that what the U.S. does or does not do is no longer important because people took matters into their own hands.'" He's talking about Egypt. Obama doesn't matter. We took over Egypt ourselves, doesn't matter. He was out there trying to get ahead of it. What he says doesn't matter. So the take over there anyway is wariness, apathy, too little, too late, no biggie.

BREAK TRANSCRIPT

RUSH: Rick in Pomona, New York. Great to have you. You're up first today on Open Line Friday. Nice to have you with us, sir.

CALLER: Hey, Rush, how are you?

RUSH: Very good, sir. Thank you.

CALLER: I tell you, when I heard Obama make his comments about the Middle East yesterday, I practically fell on the floor, and the one thing I want to tell you, a couple things, but, number one, not all Jews, of which I am, are blind supporters of Obama.

RUSH: Oh, no, I know that, but --

CALLER: Because a lot of us were expecting something like this to eventually come out. And this weekend, I'm kind of glad he made this statement when he did because this weekend I believe is the national APAC meeting in Washington and I only wish I had known he was gonna say this stuff, I woulda been down in Washington, and I would urge all APAC attendees to get over to the front of the White House, turn your back but hold up signs that say "shame on you."

RUSH: It's not gonna happen.

CALLER: I know, but I wish they would. I think what a lot of people don't realize of that group is today giving back the, according to ABC network, seized lands of the post-'67 war, next will be Jerusalem, and that will be the choke hold.

RUSH: Yeah, I know, that's coming. Well, it's not coming, it's there, but that will be the next focal point. Because everybody knows what's going on here.

CALLER: Well, not enough know that, because I just don't understand why anybody would be voting for this guy come 2012. I mean just look at the health care program.

RUSH: The simple explanation, and sometimes the simple explanation is rejected precisely because it is so simple, meaning, "Nah, Rush, it's gotta be more complicated than this." The simple explanation that liberals are liberals first. They are liberals before they are Jewish. They are liberals before they are black. They are liberals before they are women. That's why all these groups. You have the feminazis. You have the union people. You have all the various different coalitions the Democrat Party. They are liberals first, and that is to what they are loyal. And their biggest threat in their minds, their biggest fear is the American right, or the right wing anywhere, Republicans, conservatives, you name it. Blind loyalty to themselves.

So they're gonna sit there, it's entirely possible, that American liberal Jews could sit there and watch this regime whittle Israel away to nothing. (interruption) Yeah, Snerdley? What's going to wake them up? That speech yesterday, go back to 1967 borders. Blind support. Look, let me ask you a simple question to try to put something in perspective. What would make the Middle East better off, no Iran or no Israel? Okay. Well, guess what? Guess what the objective is in the Middle East? No Israel. Of course the answer is the Middle East would be profoundly safer, profoundly improved, profoundly better if there were no Iran. Nobody's making a move on Iran.

Now, we're being told that the problem in the Middle East is Israel. Our president essentially sends that message, not in so many words yesterday, but sends that message with that speech yesterday. The problem in the Middle East is Israel and we gotta do something about it. We gotta get rid of the Israelis or we gotta neuter the Israelis or whatever we have to do. But they are portrayed as the problem, and everybody knows, if you take Israel out of the Middle East, you haven't improved it, you haven't made it a better place. This is silly. What would have to happen for American Jewish liberals to realize what's going on and renounce their support for whoever is running the Democrat Party that has as part of its agenda the neutering of Israel?

Look at the New York Times. You know, I'm just kid from the middle of the country, from Missouri, not a formal education and all that, all I have to rely on is common sense. The New York Times, liberals first. They are leading the pack against Israel. They always have led the pack against Israel in portraying Israel as the problem in the Middle East. And I don't mean just their op-ed people but their official editorial position. It's always befuddled me that the New York Times is owned by a Jewish family, but they are, and it is what it is. They've admitted it for instance, to explain why they don't cover all the things that was being done to Jews by Hitler. Liberalism first, loyalty to the cause. And that's the simple answer for it. It's the same thing, why do blacks not abandon the party that has destroyed them and their families? Because of an ideological loyalty that can't be broken.

BREAK TRANSCRIPT

RUSH: Now, the New York Times caught a lot of grief about their lack of coverage during the thirties and forties of what Hitler was doing to the Jews before the war, even during the Holocaust, and the Times in effect admitted that they shied away from those kinds of stories, because they didn't want to be perceived as too Jewish. They were afraid the public would think of them as a Jewish paper, so they didn't report as extensively as they otherwise might have.

BREAK TRANSCRIPT

RUSH: Yeah, I see that. Obama and Netanyahu are gonna hold a joint press conference. That could be fun, but I have my doubts about that. I see Netanyahu under a giant thumb at this press conference. Whatever happens at this press conference, it will not be representative of anything that might happen privately between those two.